Synthesis, antimicrobial, antioxidant, cytotoxic, antiurease and molecular docking studies of N-(3-trifluoromethyl)benzoyl-N'-aryl thiourea derivatives

Abstract

An irrefutable advancement has been noted for the infectious diseases caused due to ureolytic bacteria through the development of various drugs. Keeping in mind the extremely valuable synthetic utility and medicinal significance of thiourea derivatives, synthesis of new 3-trifluoromethyl benzoic acid thiourea derivatives (3a-j) were carried out. The biological potential of all compounds in terms of antimicrobial, antioxidant, cytotoxic and antiurease activities were studied. The compounds 3a, 3c and 3i with dichloro and methoxy groups substitution on the aryl group showed significant activity against all strain of bacteria while moderate to no activity was observed in remaining compounds. Whereas the antifungal evaluation showed that all compounds were active againts C. Albican and no activity was observed against C. Prapsilosis. The cytotoxic findings revealed the non-toxic nature of these compounds as IC₅₀ values of majority of the compounds are above 100 μm except for compounds 3f and 3g. In addition, these compounds exhibited better antioxidant potential as 100 μm concentration inhibited >50% reactive oxygen species (ROS) production except compounds 3e, 3f and 3j. The compound 3a proved to be the most potent urease inhibitor showing the highest enzyme % inhibition (93.1%) with IC₅₀ value of 8.17 ± 0.24 µM and found more active as compare to standard followed by compound 3e (92.6%), 3h (91.6%), 3d (90.8%), 3b (90.6%) and 3f (90.0%) with their respective IC₅₀ values. All the synthesized compounds were docked into the binding cavity of Urease (PDB ID: 4ubp). The most active compound 3a was also ranked as top on the docking score as it was found to show valuable interactions with the target protein along with good docking scores. Hence our results revealed that the synthesized compounds have potential to be used as potent urease inhibitors after further detailed mechanistic studies.

Keywords: Antimicrobial; Antiurease; Cytotoxic; MRSA; Molecular docking; Oxidative burst assay; Thiourea.